Prior art computer calling systems have been designed to automatically dial customer telephone numbers and determine when a person (also referred to as a "customer" or "called party") answers the call. An agent at the calling system is then connected to the customer who answered the call. The agent typically reads from a prepared script and enters the information communicated during the conversation by the customer in a computer terminal.
Such calling systems are used in telemarketing, in public opinion polls, in debt collection or in other calling campaigns which require communication between an agent and a targeted group of people. In the context of this disclosure, a person referred to as a "customer" is any person called for the purposes of a particular telephone campaign.
For practical and legal purposes it is often desirable to monitor and record at least a part of the conversation between the customer and the agent. Such recording helps to verify the accuracy of the entered data and correct mistakes; to detect, prevent and deter fraud and monitor agents' performance; and to defend against false claims.
In the prior art calling systems, the monitoring and recording of the communications with the customers are cumbersome, labor intensive and inefficient. One reason is that the call recording equipment is typically separated from the computer system which stores and processes the customer data records that contain the information about each customer, such as the telephone number, ordering information and the like. During a call, this separation places additional burden on the agent who has to operate simultaneously different types of equipment. In addition, after the conversation has been completed the individual voice and data records have to be sorted and accurately labeled in order to establish the proper correlation between the records. Finally, it is time consuming to verify a given customer transaction entered by the agent because the corresponding voice record is stored separately from the data record and, therefore, the records should be independently located and physically correlated by the verifying person.
For example, for recording conversations with the customers, an agent is typically provided with an analog tape recorder connected to the telephone line. At an appropriate point in the conversation the agent must manually start the tape recorder. At the same time, the agent has to obtain the order information and enter it in the computer. The agent also has to manually stop the tape recorder after the desired voice recording is completed. At the end of a shift, one agent's tape may contain numerous recorded conversations.
As discussed, subsequent verification of the entered customer data record using the taped conversation is cumbersome. To verify a particular customer transaction one must find the appropriate agent's tape, which has been labeled and stored, and then locate the appropriate record of the conversation on the tape. Thus, a verifier may have to sift through numerous conversations on one tape to find the relevant one. Due to the fact that the prior art systems require substantial human intervention, low productivity, human errors and lost information are inevitable.
Thus, although the prior art calling systems provide substantial automation of many aspects of the calling campaigns, such systems still suffer from deficiencies due to customer record management problems.